A Civilization V AAR – Part Ten-and-Five

Brant Guillory, 30 May 2013

Do the math. Seriously. We’re at 1180 AD, and we’re 15 freakin’ episodes into this AAR. Most game run ’til at least the mid-1800s, even on “quick” speed. And the turn/year ratio gets more granular as we go. Oy.

Click images to enlarge

More Canadians.

Barbarians in the snow at the far north edge of the map: Canadians!

Rounding the Continent.

There’s a whole lotta Inca out there.

All The Way Across.

It would’ve been much faster to walk across this continent than sail around it, but all we found out there were more barbarians. Sigh.

Spreading My Religion.

You can see that Utique is slowly moving from pantheon-worshipping to the more organized Catharism as we go.

Grrrr… Scouts Picking Fights Again!

Seriously. They just won’t learn, will they? At least this guy is leveled up on survivalism.

Stomping in Circles.

I’ve got one elephant on patrol just in case more Barbarians appear, but I might consider sending him to Saguntum to provide some ‘oomph’ when fighting the Canadians over there.

To The Rescue!

My archer shows up to start plinking and try to bail out the scouts. You’ll also note that we’ve recruited a spy.

Maneuverizing.

We’re going to try to combine archer damage and scout needle-pokes to knock off a Canadian or two here.

D’oh! Ninja’ed!

The Incans snuck in and stole my kill!

And They Might Do It Again.

My scout couldn’t quite impale this last brute, and the Incans might get another gimme kill.

Move On Out!

That spy we recruited? Time to get to work! You can move a spy all over the place, but they work in cities. In friendly territory, he works counter-espionage. In city-states, he works to rig elections. In other civilizations, he’ll work to either steal technologies or inform you of military moves. Unfortunately, nowhere is there an option to recruit Anna Chapman and have her pose for Maxim.

Spread Some Mischief.

I’m sending my guy to Marrakech and see if I can’t rig some elections to gain more influence.

Domestic Improvements.

Metropolitain Carthage is undergoing some more public works upgrades, as we start building a road network just to move land units around more efficiently. Note that most folks need to build roads to connect their cities on a trade network, but Carthaginian cities get a free harbor as soon as you plant them, so as long as you keep them on the coast, they’re automatically connected to the trade network. Our road-building at this point is for internal mobility.

Naval Warfare Upgrades.

Now that we can build a Galleass, we can hit land targets from the sea – a major useful tool for keeping scouts in the fight and plinking barbarians that might get a bit too close to your missionaries and merchants.

Speaking of Merchants.

Our guy is finally closing in on Zurich. Watch the ‘influence’ we’ve got right now – already pretty damned high…